Where I Belong
by ysubassoon
Summary: It's a gesture you reserve only for Brittany; no one else has ever wanted that kind of intimacy with you, but you keep it just for the two of you, anyway.


_**Where [I] Belong**_

Anger issues? You wish it were that simple, that easy to sum up in a single label. You're not going to deny that you've been angry before, and there is definitely some anger in what you're feeling now. You have a notorious temper, but that isn't what propelled you off the stage to where he was sitting, and it wasn't what guided your hand across his face like a heat-seeking missile zeroing in on its target. This bitter, hot blend of rage, frustration, and fear tears out of you in sobs and blind punches at the air until it finally dissolves into silence as her arms wrap around you, and you sit on the auditorium floor absorbed by the only safe place you've known since you were a child.

After a few minutes (or days or years – you can't tell them apart right now), you notice that the back of your dress and your hair are starting to get soaked, and you pick your head up a little to wonder if the fire in your veins is somehow responsible for setting off the sprinkler system. You find, instead, that the rain you're feeling is coming from behind, not above, and you tighten your grip on Brittany's arms and hands, cinching them like a belt around your waist. Tenderly, you drag your thumbs back and forth across her hands, and hum a melody known only to the two of you, something you made up to calm her when you were much smaller and the world was less complicated, but no less terrifying. With time, the shaking subsides and the tears fall silently, minus the occasional sniffle.

As the beds of your own tears begin to dry, you begin to notice other voices around you, indistinct and crowded like a sharp wind plowing through the trees in autumn. Slowly, faces smear into view, distorted Vaseline images on a mirror. You twist around gently, careful not to disturb Brittany's hold on you or yours on her. Her face is vivid, the only clear picture in the room, and you begin to wonder if you were ever really able to see or feel or hear or understand anything else before you met her for the first time. You wonder if anything will ever make as much sense to you as she does. Her eyes are shining; you drag the pads of your fingers underneath each eye, and when your fingers are damp with her tears, you kiss them, and retrace the path you followed before. Brittany's eyes close and her lips curl into a leaky half-smile as you work.

You reach behind you to where her hands rest around your hips, and detach her hands so you can bring them together with yours (where they belong) in your lap. Your fingers slide against hers as they meet, and you squeeze them loosely to get her to look at you. She tilts her chin toward you expectantly. She's not waiting for you to speak; she knows how much trouble you both have with your words sometimes, especially with each other, because you've been communicating silently since you met, and much of it gets lost in translation when you try to put it into words. She sees the surrender and the questions in your eyes, and nods her answer. She pulls you up, and when you are both standing, she smooths out the bottoms of your dresses and leads you by the hand out of the auditorium and toward the principal's office.

Brittany's steps are purposeful and focused as you enter the office and seat yourselves in the waiting area outside Principal Figgins' door. The secretary scoffs at both of you, not at all surprised to see _you_ in the office again, but disgusted, at least in part, that you dragged Brittany down with you to this new low. The other part of the revulsion that you can feel in her hard stare you know too well. You have seen it from strangers when you dared to hold Britt's hand in public, when you dared to sit too close to each other, when your touches, though small and controlled, were too familiar for the public's taste.

All these things that others see you do you are starting to see as Brittany always saw them. You remember her telling you how surprised and saddened she was by all the things people didn't see when they looked at you. She couldn't understand how people could be appalled by something so beautiful as the sight of the two of you holding hands across the table at Breadstix or while walking together through the mall. Didn't they see your courage? Didn't they know your fears? Couldn't they feel how scared and desperate and lonely you were, and how hard you had to work not to pull your hand away? Didn't they know that you spent every hour of every day from the beginning of the summer until now tearing apart your life so you could make sense of yourself, so you could be ready to touch her without shame? Couldn't they see how much you loved each other, how strong your heart had to be to shield you both?

Can't they see that when you are together, you are where you belong?

Mr. Schue's slow, arrhythmic footsteps signal the end of his solemn march to the office. You guess he must have followed you out of the auditorium at some point, but you couldn't say when, because it is only now that the people and noises around you are starting to come into focus, having been washed from view by waves of tears. He enters the office but stands some distance from you. His hands clench and unclench and swing and tap his thighs because he can't decide what to do with them. The look on his face is one you haven't seen since the funeral for Sue's sister – he is somehow simultaneously sad, confused, angry over the betrayal of you by his favorite student, frustrated that two of his students are warring with each other, and wondering if there was anything he could have done before to make the present and future a little more bearable. For a few seconds, he stares at you and Brittany, but then his eyes lose focus and his head drops to his chest. He isn't used to seeing you with feelings; he isn't used to seeing you at all. He is staring at you as one does a magician who closes his hands around a crumpled wad of paper, but when he releases his hands, it's suddenly not paper at all, but a dove. You aren't the caricature he knew you to be, and he is keeping his distance until he has figured out how to react to you.

You sigh, and shift in your seat toward Brittany, who raises a hand to tug you closer, pulling her fingers lightly through your hair, close to the scalp in the way she knows will soothe you most. She places a kiss on your forehead as light and comforting as goose down. It's a gesture you reserve only for Brittany; no one else has ever wanted that kind of intimacy with you, but you keep it just for the two of you, anyway. It's familial, but just one of the many things you never had or expected to have with your family.

All your life, you've only been certain of two things: 1) your love for and from Brittany sustains you more than secondary considerations like food, water, and air, and 2) you have been a source of profound and broad disappointment for your parents and your abuela since you were conceived. Your parents did not plan on having you. You were conceived when they were celebrating a significant promotion for your mother, and your father graduating from medical school. Your birth and childhood slowed down and all but ruined the future they wanted for themselves, and they have never forgiven you for it. It was only their deep cultural and religious beliefs that prevented them from having you aborted. They have made a point of telling you, on nights when they were angriest with you, that the decision to keep you was one they would always regret.

Papi, Mami, and Abuela (who was compelled to move in after you were born to raise you so your parents could return to work) never laid a hand on you, either in anger or in love. It was a point of pride that they used words to communicate their feelings about you and about each other, and prized honesty above all things (cruelty was confused with honesty for them, and even now, you are still trying to separate the two concepts in your mind). They sneered at frustrated parents they witnessed spanking their children in public. _We are important people_, they said. _We are not animals like them. We know how to control our emotions. _So instead of growing up in fear of your father's belt or the slap of your mother's chilly hands (your parents both drank to excess, to the point where their hands were always cold at night because they were constantly wrapped around ice-filled tumblers of hard liquor), you hid under your bed, in your closet, and later, at Brittany's house, because you were terrified of Mami's double-edged tongue and Papi's sarcasm and passive-agressive rage.

Abuela's gift for insults bled into your nighttime rituals. She didn't often read to you, and most nights passed in silence, as you dressed and brushed your teeth, the only sound in the room that of the drip from your sink faucet and your toothbrush scraping and clattering against the counter after you brushed your teeth. There were times, when you were much younger, when you would only hear from her if you had a nightmare and wet the bed. Those times, her furious insults were heaped on you, and after the mess had been cleaned up, you would climb back into bed, tug the covers over your head, and squeeze your eyes shut in a futile attempt to fall asleep faster so that you could escape her anger. Some nights, she would tell you stories of people she met and things she witnessed that day or in the past when she was still married to Abuelo, living together in poverty in Puerto Rico.

Though often backbiting, and more rant than anything else, the stories she told became your fables, where you learned about greed, jealousy, power, influence, and control. The victims she spoke of were always weak and deserving of their fate, and the protagonists were always the people who had the most power and the most control over their lives. You learned from her that nothing would ever satisfy your family except a first-place finish in everything you did. Other lessons learned? The best way to stop people from passing you over for something you wanted or looking down on your brown skin and slightly accented English was to work twice as hard as your competition (_everyone _was/is your competition), and to create elaborate schemes and power plays to manipulate your way to the top. Only people with power could change their circumstances for the better. Learn the other person's weaknesses, and feast on them. Kindness was corrupting, and to be avoided at all costs. You picked up on these things as rapidly as possible; your parents wanted you to be a great student, and it was always your job to make them proud of you.

When you were four, you decided that you were going to teach yourself to read and write. Your abuela didn't find you to be very stimulating company, so the extent of her babysitting revolved around the cable television schedule, which she would interrupt once or twice to feed you. You started watching shows like Sesame Street, and you knelt behind the coffee table near the big screen TV, and practiced printing letters and numbers, repeating them to yourself quietly as you wrote them in crayon on paper napkins and scraps of newspaper you found laying around. When you felt confident enough, you started arranging the letters in random orders, like they would be in names and other words. A month before kindergarten started, and three months before your fifth birthday, you decided it was time you learned how to write and spell your name. By this point, you had heard it so many times, and you were so familiar with the sounds each letter made, that you were sure you could write it properly.

You sneaked into your father's home office one afternoon while he was working an extra surgical shift at the hospital, and removed three pieces of plain white paper from the tray on his printer. Careful not to bend or tear them, you gently toted them back to the large, heavy dining room table, with its dark, smooth wood, and finely decorated legs. You opened your small box of crayons, and after some thought, selected a crayon and, with tremendous deliberation, traced out the first few letters of your name. When you had printed it several times, with some words crossed out because of spelling issues, you sat back and stared triumphantly at your handiwork.

_Gabij__fAs_

_Garbaj__fas_

_Garbage Face_

_Garbage Face_

_Garbage Face_

_Garbage Face_

_Garbage Face_

You were going to be the only kid in your class who would be able to write your name on the first day. Your parents would be proud of you; you were sure of that.

The morning of the first day of school arrived early for you following a fitful sleep brought on by your excitement at the prospect of showing off all your new school supplies, clothes, and printing prowess. You daydreamed briefly as you dressed and combed your hair about all the friends you would make, and how you would lead them all in games and on the playground equipment. Once all the tangles were out of your mostly unruly hair, you parted it and topped it off with a pink headband, which was both your favorite color and your favorite accessory, stretching up on your tiptoes to check yourself in the dresser mirror. You'd been alternating headbands with simple ponytails for several years by then because Abuela always complained about being too busy to help you with your hair, and Mami and Papi were always at work. When she stopped helping you altogether, just after your fourth birthday, you decided headbands would be the easiest and best way to style your hair.

After Abuela's large gray sedan pulled up to sidewalk in front of the school, you pushed the back door open, and slid across the seat, pushing yourself with one hand and gripping your backpack with the other until you were out of the car. Abuela drove away quickly, the tires of her car kicking up pebbles as she reentered traffic. You breathed deeply once or twice to settle your nerves, and took in your surroundings. All around you, children and parents were saying goodbye, some your age, most older. A few of the smaller children were sobbing and begging their parents to stay with them or to take them home. Undaunted by the presence of so many older, bigger children, you walked briskly up the sidewalk to what you determined was the main school entrance. Once inside, you followed a small cluster of children your age and a few glassy-eyed parents down the hall to the kindergarten classrooms. The building was ancient and huge, with lockers that stretched from the floor all the way up near the ceiling, and large, rough wooden doors with hinges that squeaked each time they were used. You were so caught up in what you were seeing around you that you nearly missed the door to your classroom.

You peered into the room, and spotted a small carpeted area with neatly labeled toy containers, a play kitchen, and a plastic house. The center of the room was filled with rows of perfectly aligned, organized desks set up in pairs and then columns, with completed name tags carefully taped to the front edge. Some of the desks had students sitting at them already, and the remaining students were lined up against the row of hooks and cubbyholes near the door. The teacher called out a name, and that student sat down at the desk she pointed to. One by one, names were called, and one by one, students sat in their assigned seats, until you were standing alone by the door, with all of the other children's eyes boring into you.

You bounced on your feet a little, and shifted your backpack in an attempt to not feel nervous and cornered. You didn't understand what happened. Why wasn't your name called? Were you supposed to be in the other room? Did she say your name before you got there?

The teacher, Miss R-Something, a tall, petite woman with light brown hair and a long flowered skirt and blazer, looked at you for a few moments, as if trying to calculate her next move. Her eyes drifted back to her clipboard, and you grew desperate for any movement at all from her, just to distract the other students from you. It is then that you noticed a blonde girl around your size leaving her seat and walking toward you. This made you even more agitated, and instinctively you backed up, until you met the wall. Your eyes widened as this girl invaded your space, stopping just a foot from where you stood. You were not used to being that close to anyone; your body moved in a thousand directions at once, not having enough experience to know how to respond. Once she got that close, you could not help but stare at her uncomprehendingly. She was dressed in a light sundress, the colors of which reminded you of springtime, of climbing the small tree in your back yard, and swinging your legs back and forth as you sat on the thick, low branch. Her eyes were a stunning soft blue, like a cloudless sky just before dusk. There was a lock of hair that had loosened from her ponytail, and before you could stop yourself, you lifted your hand and halted it near the top of her head, poised to tuck it back before returning your side.

"Hi, I'm Brittany. Are you lost? If you are, it's okay, 'cause I still get lost when I go places, too. Especially new places."

You were still overwhelmed by her eyes, so you said nothing. The awkward silence made you cringe in anticipation of her mocking, derisive laughter at your inability to speak. Instead, she reached for your hand but stopped at your fingers, taking them loosely in her own.

"Are you okay?" she whispered. You nodded slightly, still staring at your hand like it belonged to someone else, someone you didn't recognize.

"The teacher … she never ..." You could barely hear yourself, and your voice was so strained and thin. You sounded just like one of those weak, needy people your parents had always warned you about. You stopped before you embarrassed yourself further.

Without letting go of her tenuous grip on your fingers, Brittany took her free hand and lifted your chin so she could look you in the eye. She begged you with her gentle, searching gaze to continue.

"She never called my name," you finished. Brittany looked relieved and confident of finding a solution.

"Oh. If you want, you can tell me your name, and I'll go ask her if she knows it."

"I guess that would be okay."

"Awesome. What's your name?"

Recalling the homework you'd given yourself, and the hours you had dedicated to learning how to write it correctly, you straightened up and said with pride, "It's Garbage Face."

Brittany's smile disappeared, and the rest of the class snickered. You swallowed the tears you felt approaching, and wondered what had to be done to get Brittany to smile again, and why you cared more about that than about the reaction of the other students. Seeing her sad broke some part of your heart you hadn't used before, and you didn't know what to do with that.

She let go of your hand and walked back to the teacher, who had been watching your conversation with intense interest. While Brittany and Miss R-Something spoke quietly to each other, you stared at your hand, at the fingers she had touched, and wiggled them to see if they were still yours. Since she touched you, they felt like someone else's fingers that had gotten attached to your hand by mistake.

After a brief discussion, Miss R-Something walked over to you with Brittany close behind. The teacher knelt down to your level before she spoke.

"Who calls you that?"

Exasperated, you responded, "What do you mean, who calls me that? Everyone calls me that – Mami, Papi, Abuela – everyone. It's my name. Doesn't your family use your name when they talk to you?"

She looked away for a moment, but not before you see tears forming in her eyes. Why is this such an issue with her? It's just a stupid name.

"That's not your real name, honey. I don't know why anyone calls you that, but it's not your real name. That's not who you are."

"Wait, wh … that's not my name? But they say it all the time to me, all the time. I've never heard them call me anything else."

Both Brittany and Miss R-Something were speechless.

You lifted the straps of your backpack off your shoulders, and unzipped the main pouch, looking for your papers. After a few seconds, you pulled your homework out of your name and handed it to the teacher.

"See? I spent all summer learning how to write it so I could show you all how smart I was. I worked. so. hard."

The room was still silent. Your teacher shuffled the papers slowly, as though it pained her to read what you had written on them.

"So what's my name supposed to be? What are people supposed to call me now?"

"Santana Lopez."

You tried repeating it to yourself a few times, but your tongue got lodged in the roof of your mouth. You glanced over at Brittany, and see that she is trying to say it, too, and she was having even less success than you were.

"Sanphunny … Santeemie …" she gives up. "San. Your name is San."

San. It fit you. It swirled in your mouth like your favorite kind of gum just before you blew a bubble. Somehow, hearing her say it made it seem less plain, more special than it sounded when you said it to yourself.

"My name is San." You smiled at Brittany, extending your hand politely.

"My name is Brittany," she replied, giggling. Instead of shaking your hand like you expected her to, she held it and gave it a small squeeze.

Your hand was back where it belonged.

Miss R-Something cleared her throat and walked back to a seat in the middle of the last row. She pointed to the name tag, which had an S-A-N on it, and other letters you could only assume belonged to your name. You understood, and walked back to the seat, squeezing Brittany's hand once before sitting down. Brittany looked so lost since you separated that you wracked your brain to find a way to cheer her up again. You picked up the name tag of the child sitting next to you and walked to Brittany's desk, which you recognized because it had a B-R-I-T-T on the name tag, and you swapped the new name tag with Brittany's. You walked over to where Brittany stood, and opened her hand so that you could lay her tag in it. Then you put your hand on her arm and led her back to your seat, pulling out the chair to your right so that she knew where to sit. After she sat down, you pushed it in so she could be closer to the desk.

The teacher took a step toward you, attempting to put Brittany back in her assigned seat, so you gave her your most intimidating glare, the one Mami had taught you, and she retreated back to the front of the room to begin the first lesson.

The rest of the first week, when you were bored at school, which was often, and when Brittany daydreamed, which was also often, you practiced writing your name, filling pages of scrap paper with S-A-N S-A-N S-A-N. Brittany caught on to what you were doing, and asked you to help her learn to write her name. You wrote what you knew of it, and taught her the shapes of the letters, and soon, her papers were being filled with B-R-I-T-T B-R-I-T-T B-R-I-T-T. When you both got tired of that, you started writing each other's names, first on separate pages, and then, after you discovered that you could write on the same page, because she used her right hand, and you used your left, you would take one line and print your name, and then she would print hers on the next one, SAN BRITT SAN BRITT.

One afternoon, an episode of Sesame Street aired that focused on the word AND. So you practiced all night, and the next morning, arrived especially early to school, heading straight to where Brittany was standing to show her what you had learned. By the end of the day, you both had filled every piece of paper from both your desks, including the back of old worksheets Miss R-Something had assigned you with SAN AND BRITT BRITT AND SAN. Your names, like your hands, fit together in ways you had not expected. When you saw your name beside hers, it looked like it was right where it belonged.

By the time Friday rolled around, you were dreading the weekend, because it meant being cooped up in the house with your abuela, who mostly ignored you unless you needed fed. It also meant being separated from Brittany for three whole nights and two days. You were just beginning to figure out what this thing was between you, why you mattered so much to each other so soon after meeting, and you didn't know how you were going to survive the separation. So when Brittany bounced into class on Friday morning to ask you if you wanted to come over to her house for a sleepover, you immediately grinned and said yes. There were still several minutes before school officially started, so you asked your teacher if you could make a phone call from the office, and she told you how to find it. You locked your fingers together with Brittany's, and all but ran to the office. Panting upon your arrival, you walked up to the tall counter, and pulled yourself up on your tiptoes so you could see the secretary as you asked to use the phone. She brought you the handset and told you how to dial the number, which she found in your student file, and you dialed Abuela.

It didn't take Abuela long to figure out that saying yes to your request meant that she would would be free to do as she pleased for a full twenty-four hours. Once Brittany understood that you had secured her permission, she wrapped her arms around you in such a strong hug that your feet kicked the air for a few seconds. You squealed and laughingly begged her to put you down. She complied immediately, but refused otherwise let go. You saw no reason to fight her on it. It was only when the school secretary cleared her throat that you pulled apart and returned to your classroom.

The rest of the day both rushed and dragged for you, speeding along as Brittany tried to squeeze everything she knew about her family, her house, and what you would be doing there, into the space of a few hours. Time slowed down for you only by decree from your stomach, which was twisting itself at the thought of meeting her family and having your first sleepover, and really, your first visit to a friend's house, since you hadn't had any before.

When you reached the point where you were so nervous, you were becoming a pale green, Brittany picked up on it immediately, and leaned into you as she whispered in your ear that it would be okay. Her family was really nice to everyone, and since _she _liked you, they were sure to like you, too. When that didn't do anything, she extended the pinky of her left hand to you.

"It will be fine; I promise I'll keep you safe from whatever it is you're afraid of. Pinky swear."

"Pinky swear? What's that?"

"Pinky swears are only, like, the most serious promises ever. You can't break them."

You wrapped your pinky around hers, and once again reveled in how comfortable it was there. But you gripped it tighter when you felt Brittany start to pull away.

"No."

She appeared confused, so you clarified. "I want to keep them like this. If it's like you said, that putting our pinkies together is what you do when you want to make a promise to somebody, then leaving them together must be what you do when you want to keep it."

She stared at you for a few seconds, and you waited patiently for her moment of realization, and then she grinned at you and lowered your linked pinkies in between your seats.

From the moment Brittany introduced you to her mother as the two of you stood on the sidewalk that crisp fall day, everything Britt promised you with her pinky came true. The Pierce family was incredibly kind to you and, like their daughter, Mr. and Mrs. Pierce were able to intuit when you needed space or when to explain something you saw that was new to you, so that you wouldn't be afraid of it. And everything they did was new to you. The house was warmed by their love for each other, which they expressed through physical affection and by sharing their days at the dinner table, absent the sarcasm and general chill of your house. Britt held your pinky under the table throughout dinner. Throughout that first evening, when you or Brittany spoke without thinking, you stiffened instinctively for the verbal backlash you were sure was coming. It didn't. They looked like they wanted to say something, but instead they approached you slowly, crouched down to your level, squeezed your hands, and assured you that you would never have anything to fear while you were with them.

The Pierces tucked you both into Britt's bed when the time came (you borrowed a pair of pjs from Brittany rather than stopping at your house after school to get a change of clothes. The more time you spent at the Pierce residence, the less time you wanted to spend at yours, and you became increasingly insistent that she not see your house, or the way your family was to each other), and told you a story without a book, which reminded you of Abuela, but their story was nothing like hers. It was an adventure story they had created themselves, and they made up a new chapter to it every single night. When they got stuck, Brittany would fill pause with her own ideas about how it should continue. You couldn't follow the story, so you just lay there watching Brittany as she listened to it. Her happiness was such a strange new source of comfort for you; it never happened before or since that anyone else's well being became such a critical element of your own. You couldn't feel happy when she was sad. You couldn't be angry when she was smiling at you. You couldn't believe that things weren't going to get a whole lot better when she accepted the pinky you offered.

You were so nervous that night, never having slept in a bed with someone else before, and you were also terrified that you might wet the bed in your agitated state. You laid prone on the bed, your muscles tensing at the slightest movement. Brittany rolled over and put her hand on your head, stroking your hair gently until you were calm. Then she pulled you toward her until you were half-lying on her with your head resting against her shoulder, and her arms comfortably slung around your waist. She kissed your forehead that night for the first time, and you felt so warm and safe there with her that you fell into a deep sleep faster than you had managed to since you were a baby. Your last thought before you slipped into unconsciousness? _I think this is where I belong_.

Nearly every weekend was spent at her house after that. Your family was happy to be free of you, and Mr. and Mrs. Pierce were a little in awe of how kind and helpful you were to their daughter. They knew that her way of looking at the world was a sign of the depth of her comprehension of it, but they also knew and worried constantly before school began how she would be treated, because Brittany's tendencies both to daydream and to say the fantastical things she was thinking about were probably going to make her the target of bullies. You weren't able to keep that fear from becoming a reality, but you were able to prevent it from causing her any harm. You were a quick study on the playground once you learned that its language, primarily, was the same one spoken in your home – the language of insults. As a fluent speaker, it didn't take long before you were the most intimidating child on the playground, and that kept the bullies away from Brittany. She was safe as long as she was with you, which worked out fine for both of you, since it actually hurt to be more than an arm's length away from each other.

As the years passed, and you moved through elementary school and into middle school, you found yourself telling Brittany things no one knew about you – your hopes and fears, both for the present and the future, and what life was really like for you at home. When the Pierces stopped tucking Brittany in with a story because they wanted her to learn how to do things the way grown-ups did them, like being responsible for getting herself to bed and getting herself up, you replaced their stories with yours. You told her not-quite-fables about the inescapable loneliness of a silent house, about how Mami and Papi still hadn't stopped being angry with each other over Papi's gambling addiction from medical school. It cost you the house you used to live in (you were almost too small to remember the old house, because you were so young when you moved, but you do remember that it was cold, expansive, and hollow like a cave), because Mami didn't make enough to pay the mortgage _and _feed you. You told Brittany how you found out about the move: one day, when you were three, you arrived home from playing in the park, and you were so excited by what you saw: Mami, Papi, and Abuela were all home together, and they were talking to each other. None of them attempted to explain anything to you, since they believed that you were too young to understand it. There was too much to do, anyway.

(Had you been old enough to understand the question – and the answer – you would have learned that you were moving because near the end of his time at medical school, Papi befriended a group of men who came from wealthy families, and he felt ashamed of his relative poverty. He was there on a scholarship, and it was awkward for him to dine with them, because the cost of a single meal was nearly as much as his monthly rent for the tiny studio apartment he had above a storefront in downtown Lima. He was in debt almost immediately. Desperate for a quick way to pay his bills in full, he took up gambling. For a while, he did well, but then he hit a long losing streak, and the bills piled up again. He gambled more to try to pay it off, with very mixed results, including the loss of the house to foreclosure. His gambling addiction continues to this day, which is why your parents have important, high-paying jobs, but can never get ahead. It was one element that contributed to the destruction of their marriage; another was that your mother was entranced by finer things, just like your father, and shopped several times a week. When they had money, they lavished you with it so you would have an excuse to leave them alone. When money was tight,you started shoplifting to get the clothes and other items you wanted, since neither of them could afford them. Pretending to be someone you were not, and being able to convince people that the ephemeral you they saw was the real you was something your parents taught you. Of all the skills you had acquired up to this point in your life, this ability to hide who you were like all those animals you learned about in biology that pretended to be poisonous or dead or some inanimate, innocuous thing to survive - this was your strongest skill set, without question. Your poison was very real, but your professed sexuality was not. And you owe it all to the example set for you by your family. You have always had nightmares about becoming like them when you grew up. You see so much of them in you, in the things you do and say, that it makes your skin crawl.)

You were ecstatic, because you couldn't remember a time before that day that you were all together. They were packing everything in the house into boxes, and no one would tell you why. It felt like a game to you, a puzzle. You ran from room to room, trying to guess which one was going to empty first. By the end of the day, the boxes were all packed, except for an overnight bag for each of you that held enough clothes and toiletries to get you through the move. Everyone was too tired to fight, so Mami ordered a pizza, and Papi finished the last two bottles of beer, and you all just sat in the living room soaking in the day's accomplishments. This was your earliest happy memory.

The next day, a large truck arrived, and some uniformed men leapt out of it and starting hauling the boxes out of the house. One of them let you help them by carrying your stuffed animals, pillows, and other small items and handing them to the mover waiting in the back of the truck to place all the items you brought him. You felt like such a big kid helping out like that. Your little chest swelled with pride. Of course, you were still young and tired easily, so when one of the movers found you curled up on some boxes in the dining room, with a small teddy bear tucked in your arm, fast asleep, he picked you up and carried you to your parents' car, laying you in the back seat with the windows down so you would have a breeze to keep you cool. You woke up with Abuela in the back with you, and Papi and Mami driving across town to your new, troubled neighborhood.

You told Brittany a story every night you spent with her, because you found out early on that she couldn't fall asleep without one. When you couldn't think of a story, you sang. When you couldn't think of something to sing, you hummed something you invented. When you couldn't think up a melody, you told her one of your secrets. She protested at first, but because it was getting hard for you to tell her stories that ended happily (you didn't know many things that did), at least telling a secret brought you closer to one another, and that made you both happy.

Sometimes you would wait until she had fallen asleep to tell her your secrets, things too deep inside your heart to bring up when she could hear you. You would turn away from her as you did, in case she woke up in the middle of your confession. You would lie there in the dark, and tell her how repugnant you found yourself, how your daily and hourly deceits clawed at you. You would tell her that you wished with everything you had that you were a better person, good enough to be her friend, good enough to love her, but you weren't certain that you weren't beyond repair. You would tell her of your worries that one day, the lies you lived would be so convincing that even you would believe them, and you would end up like your mother, wrapping yourself around the nearest liquor bottle and waiting for time to end. You would tell her that you didn't know how your adventure story with her was going to end, but that you hoped it would be happy and fill many, many more chapters. Sometimes, the morning after these confessions, you would wake up to find that Brittany's half of the pillow was damp, and her eyes were slightly red-rimmed. You continued to pour yourself out at night, anyway, even though you knew she was probably listening. You had heard the sentiment at mass a hundred times before you met Brittany, but it wasn't until then that you believed what the priest had been telling you: Confession is good for the soul.

In the end, that's why you wanted to come out, why you finally accepted yourself. The mask you had always worn was too heavy for you, and it was a relief to lift it at all. Even though you didn't know how the people you told would take it, you felt a little lighter to have one less lie to one less person to carry around. Telling people personally gave you the control you had always wanted, and it bought you time with people you were dreading finding out, like your parents and some of the athletes at school. You needed time because you knew firsthand how unsafe and cruel the world was, and how much more you would be targeted for being gay than you already were for being Hispanic and a woman. You had to tell the right people in the right sequence to ensure your safety once you and Brittany were out. It would be a long but necessary process. Or it would have been. Finn changed all of that. He undid the careful planning and hard work you put in from the beginning of summer until now. By outing you, and thus setting off the chain of events that outed you to anyone with an interest in the Ohio electoral campaign and access to the internet and/or a television, Finn took away any chance you had at protecting the two of you. You would be on the defensive for the rest of the school year, including the hours outside of school. You weren't sure which was worse: him saying that the whole school knew already, or the clueless statement that he believed nobody cared. The thought of some of the football and hockey team members knowing who you were froze you to your bones. The thought of your parents finding out before you could tell them yourself left your tongue numb and your body trembling.

Brittany is calling you now. It's time to walk into Principal Figgin's office and meet the first part of your million-parted fate. You are still with her, where you belong, and your love for each other will be your armor for the long battles and wars ahead. You are not angry that you were outed; you are heartbroken. And you will spend all the time it takes to make people understand the difference.

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